


A Cottage For Sale

by amidland



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:00:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28821867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amidland/pseuds/amidland
Summary: 'Cottage For Sale' said the wooden sign hammered into the lawn at the front of the property, just behind the stone-brick wall and to the left of the creaky wrought iron gate.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Comments: 26
Kudos: 158





	A Cottage For Sale

'Cottage For Sale' said the wooden sign hammered into the lawn at the front of the property, just behind the stone-brick wall and to the left of the creaky wrought iron gate. The creak was something he'd been meaning to fix about four decades ago, but they'd quickly realised that it was a good way to tell that someone was approaching the house. In their old age, both his and her hearing had taken a hit so they didn't always hear when somebody knocked on the door. The squeal of the gate was just high pitched enough, though, that it was still clearly audible.

Harry Potter smiled sadly as he swung open the gate and slowly made his way up the path towards the door. The garden that had once been idyllically green and pristine - free of weeds and mown a neat height - was now overgrown and largely dead. He'd never taken any joy from gardening, but Hermione had. She saw to the garden with tender care and took pride in its picture-perfectness. Not because either of them had ever cared what the neighbours thought, mind, simply because it fitted with the image she'd had in her mind since they'd first bought the place. Their perfect little home with a perfect little garden. And what a job she'd done of it.

The curtains inside had all been drawn so that nobody could see in. Nonetheless, in his mind's eye he could still see her - twenty-five years old, curled up on the bench in the bay window, reading a book as the fingers of her left hand absently played with and inevitably tangled in her riotous curls. More times than he could count over the years, he'd had to come to the rescue as she'd managed to wrap hair around her engagement ring, and couldn't free herself.

By the time they were nearing a hundred years old, the bench had long since been replaced by a big plush armchair - no longer could she curl up to read, tucking her feet underneath her. Her old and aching joints didn't bend that way anymore. Instead, they'd bought a reclining armchair to sit in that same spot. The wild locks of chestnut hair had thinned and tamed and turned grey by then, but she still managed to get her ring tangled. Harry had taken to calling her a 'silly bugger' every time she did it, and Hermione would take a playful swipe at him for laughing at her.

At the door, he tapped one of the bricks beside the handle with the end of his walking stick, and the front of it slid open: a facade hiding her old set of keys. He'd long since given his and the childrens' to the estate agents, but he'd kept these safe. There was a keychain on it with a photo of their family from when Lucy, their youngest, was about six years old. Oftentimes, he had trouble remembering events or details from when their kids were still kids, but he remembered with clarity the day that photo was taken. A much younger Harry Potter had a hand each on his two sons' shoulders, while Hermione struggled to hold an uncooperative Lucy still in her arms. They were all dressed up for Luna and Rolf's wedding, but the little girl wasn't a fan of the dress her mother had picked out for her.

The keys jangled a melancholically familiar tune as he unlocked the door, and it opened to reveal such a familiar smell. One he'd associated with home for the best part of a century. One he'd never smell again after today. Bending down with an old man's groan, he collected the couple of letters that had been posted through the door since he'd been here last. One for him, from the estate agent, and one with 'Mr & Mrs H Potter' handwritten on the front. He never had gotten tired of reading that.

Closing the door behind him, he tapped his walking stick on the ground once and the downstairs lights all lit up in response. Hermione had always rolled her eyes at the proud little smile he'd wear everytime he did that - 'Honestly, if I had known you got so much joy out of little parlour tricks, your birthdays would have been much easier,' she'd despaired to him once. Well, bugger her. It'd taken him two weeks to get it working properly - he was allowed to be proud.

The lights in the hallway gave him a clear view of the markings on the kitchen door-frame. Etched lines starting from about two feet up climbed incrementally until they stopped at one with the markings '6'1 TAP'. Thomas had outgrown them all, much to the chagrin of his older brother James. Lucy had capped out at 5'4, the shortest of the lot and stick-thin to boot, but she'd made up for it by being wickedly fast on both foot and broom.

On the kitchen island, a thin layer of dust had settled; a quick wave of his hand cleaned the surface and he put the letters down, making a mental note to read them later. He'd had to get better at keeping track of his mental notes in the last year. Remembering to do little jobs and chores had never been one of his strong suits. It had driven Hermione up the wall more than once, but she'd always been there to remind him to take the bins out or feed the cats or read his mail.

It had taken a while to get used to the responsibility of doing it all without prompting, but sometimes - very occasionally - he swore that he could hear her voice exasperatedly telling him that he'd forgotten to wash the pots before he settled down to bed. More than once, he had deliberately not done one of his small jobs just to hear the sound of her voice again.

A layer of dust had settled across the living room, too, on the mantelpiece and on their 'his and hers' set of side tables: one made of holly, one made of vine. The bookshelves either side of the chimney breast looked naked without the hundreds of books crammed in. The shelves themselves looked almost comical - they'd bowed under the weight of all of the tomes they'd held over the years.

The wallpaper above the fireplace was slightly lighter than the rest of the wall on account of the mirror that had hung there for countless decades. Standing as he was, staring at the round patch of clean paper, Harry could almost see once more an image that he'd seen countless times over his lifetime: Hermione desperately trying to get her hair to cooperate before they left the house for this celebration or that function. He'd step up behind her, wrap his arms around her waist and tell her that she looked beautiful, all while making eye contact with her reflection. She'd roll her eyes or shake her head in disagreement, but he always made a point to notice the small smile and slight blush that she'd wear afterwards.

Across the sliding glass doors at the back of the room a set of vertical blinds hid the back garden from view. That was for the best really. While she had always kept the front garden neat and picturesque, the back garden had really been her pride and joy. It didn't feel right to look out there now and see what had once been pristinely-kept beds of roses and lilies now wilted and overtaken by weeds.

The stairs seemed to creak in harmony with his knees as he slowly climbed towards the bedrooms. The wooden handrail was worn smooth from decades of use - from young children using it as leverage as they learned to climb on two feet rather than all fours - from slightly older children sitting on it and sliding down, because walking or even running down the stairs took far too much time for a teenager - from the support needed by the elderly couple that lived there as their knees refused to cooperate as they used to.

Harry shared a little smile with himself as he looked over his shoulder at the little wooden acorn ornament that sat atop the bottom-most post of the handrail. That acorn had been knocked off more times than he'd ever have been able to keep count; a tube of wood glue had made its home in the chest of drawers in the hallway after the fifth or sixth time. He had suggested just keeping it there with a permanent sticking charm, but Hermione had argued that if the kids insisted on sliding down the railing, at least this way they'd be less likely to injure themselves.

At the top of the stairs, the door to the left led to what had been Lucy's room and had eventually turned into the de facto for infant grandchildren and great-grandchildren. On the windowsill was an etching that had caused the type of argument that only a teenage girl could have with her mum. Lucy had scored a heart in the middle of the wooden beam, with the initials 'LP+NW' inside.

'It'll be your responsibility to fix the windowsill when you move on from him!' Hermione had told their daughter, adding, 'Without magic! Sandpaper and paint!'

The hormonal teenager had shouted back that he was the love of her life and that she'd never have to fix it, so there. She'd had the last laugh, after all. Lucy Wood, _neé_ Potter, had married Oliver Wood's youngest son, Nick, not five years later - a fact that she'd never let her mum live down.

Next to Lucy's old room was the room that James and Tom had shared, which had become a guest room once Tom flew the nest. They'd been offered separate rooms before James went off to Hogwarts - Harry had suggested that they could convert the loft into a third bedroom - but the brothers had been thick as thieves from the moment they could talk to one another, and had declined the offer.

Even after all of the decades that had passed since the boys had moved out, he still hesitated slightly before opening the door. When the brothers had both been home, entering this room had meant taking one's nose in their own hands. Sometimes the room would smell of old food long forgotten, sometimes it would be some sort of prank that one had pulled on the other, sometimes it would be some potion or another that did god knows what, and sometimes it would just be the pungent aroma that came from two teenage boys sharing a space.

On the ceiling of the guest bedroom there was a small blue stain, perfectly shaped like a five-point star. To this day, both of the boys refused to say how it had gotten there. However they'd managed it, the stain was persistent; it had resisted countless attempts at being removed - by magic or otherwise - or even covered with paint. _A mystery for the ages_ , Harry thought to himself.

Opposite the boys' room was what had been his and Hermione's bedroom for all of the decades that they'd called this cottage home. Two intricately-carved wardrobes - again, one made of holly, the other of vine - stood tall and proud either side of a king-size bed which could have been a single for all of the space they actually needed from it. They'd never used the full width of the thing, always sleeping in one another's arms, Hermione lay half on top of him even when she had been pregnant.

Another bookshelf stood in the corner of the room, next to the vanity, the shelves of which were slightly less bent and bowed, but only very slightly. The bedroom echoed with the sounds of their lives together: the despaired cries from the throws of their nightmares, the passionate moans of a young couple with nothing better to do of a night, the cheers and tears of joy after a positive result from the pregnancy charm, the groans of two tired parents as children stormed in to wake them up for birthdays and Christmases.

The bedside table to the left had a ring stained into it from where Hermione would make herself a cup of tea before bed every night. She insisted that it helped her sleep, but the cup would always be full and cold come sunrise after she'd gotten into whichever book she was reading that night and forgotten about the nightcap she declared necessary.

On the landing, Harry stood beneath the hatch for the loft and lifted his walking stick, tapping it against the ceiling once. The hatch opened itself up and a ladder lowered itself to the floor. He grinned slightly - that one had taken even longer than the lights had, to no less exasperation from his wife. He climbed slowly, despite the protests of his joints, into the cottage's loft.

It was quite a large space, and thankfully just about tall enough to stand in. The loft had once been stacked with tens of neatly-labelled and organised boxes, storing random items and bits of paperwork that had been deemed just too valuable or important to get rid of, but not quite important or valuable enough to have a place downstairs. Now, it was completely empty. With the help of the children and grand-children, he'd taken every box down and gone through it, giving some items away to the family, selling others, and rubbishing the rest as they wouldn't be needed any more. James went through all of the paperwork, destroying those that had no use, collecting notes and journals of his mothers', and filing those few things that still needed to be kept.

There was just one item up here now that Harry needed to deal with himself. He made his way to the end, towards the chimney breast, and placed his hand against the bricks.

' _Revelio_ ,' he whispered, and a facade of bricks disappeared to reveal a wand - The Wand. He'd not seen it since the day they had moved in, more than eighty years ago, but the time had come to take it away from its hiding place and take it with him to its final resting place. It was poetic, Hermione had said when they'd discussed his plan, for the Elder Wand to be buried with him in the graveyard in Godric's Hollow, not a stone's throw from its original owner. It was finally time to put this legend to rest.

He carefully placed it in his inside coat pocket before turning and heading back out of the loft, tapping the ceiling once more once he'd cleared the ladder, which folded itself back up and the hatch closed of its own accord. The door to their bedroom was closed with a sad smile before he closed the kids bedroom doors too. His hand glided smoothly down the worn handrail, and he gave the acorn a slight nudge as he passed it, just to make sure it was still secure.

His fingers brushed the etchings on the kitchen door frame as he passed by, and he stopped at the door to the living room to give one last chuckle at the curved bookshelves and one last fleeting glance at the lightened paper above the mantelpiece and the old armchair in the bay window.

His walking stick sounded against the floorboards in two solid knocks, turning the lights off as he took the keys out his pocket and made for the front door, the keys ringing out that same familiar tune as he unlocked the door and stepped out. He paused on the doorstep for a moment as a murmur passed his ears.

'You forgot the letters, silly bugger,' the wind whispered in his late wife's voice.

He shook his head and turned back into the house, grabbing the letters from the kitchen island before leaving once more, forevermore. Harry locked the door and pocketed the keys - they'd need to be given to the estate agent now. Pausing for a moment, he rested his forehead against the door, bidding a silent farewell to the only true home he'd really known for his whole life.

Slowly making his way down the path, past the overgrown lawn and the weeds and the dead plants, and past the sign beside the gate which told the end of Harry Potter's story for all to see:

'Cottage For Sale'


End file.
